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First major shipping company to use SkySails on cargo ship

Discussions of conventional and alternative energy production technologies.

Re: First major shipping company to use SkySails on cargo sh

Unread postby Novus » Sat 29 Apr 2006, 22:09:49

I could have sworn I postred a comment on this before. I don't think it is possible. The sail is much too small to move that ship. You need dozens of sails to move a ship and they need to be attached to masts not flimsy cables. Even if their model works now the scaled up version won't work because because of complex fluid dynamics. Mosquitos can walk on water and buble bees can fly but scaled up both will sink like rocks.
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Re: First major shipping company to use SkySails on cargo sh

Unread postby Laurasia » Sun 30 Apr 2006, 00:35:49

I can't wait till they equip passenger ships with these sails. I'll be in the queue waiting to buy a ticket! I like the way they retrofit existing ships with the sails. A new fleet does not have to be built.

Regards,

L.
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Re: First major shipping company to use SkySails on cargo sh

Unread postby SoothSayer » Sun 30 Apr 2006, 16:24:36

Lorenzo said:
My advice: do invest.

After all, they're German engineers (you know what that means)

Yes .. but do you?
German engineers can produce fantastic products ... BUT ... they often produce the WRONG products,

and the EU's investing, so they must be onto something.
Rubbish ... take a look at what the EU invests in, and see if you recognise the company names or if any product ever resulted. The EU investment history is a disgrace, and seem to be exploited by academics and also by semi-scam projects.
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Re: First major shipping company to use SkySails on cargo sh

Unread postby Zardoz » Sun 30 Apr 2006, 18:40:24

More on this here:

Are Wind-Assisted Ships In Our Future?

I don't see the kite ever being a practical solution. It will only be usable going downwind or, at best, when running at about 90 degrees to the wind direction. Kiteboarders battle hard to go upwind at all, and it'll be much harder for ships to do it.

The technical problems will be enormous. All sailing systems are very failure-prone, and always will be because they must be light to be efficient. Light equals weak.

Work on wind-powered cargo vessels will continue, though, because of the enormity of the post-Peak shipping problem. Does everybody know that the global shipping industry burns over 5 million barrels a day? It's a huge chunk of our consumption. If we do see them, I suppose they'll resemble these:

Image Image
Image Image

Don't even think about nuke-powered freighters. The operational and security problems are so huge that there can be no possibility of them ever being solved.
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Re: First major shipping company to use SkySails on cargo sh

Unread postby cube » Sun 30 Apr 2006, 19:36:14

My advice: do invest. After all, they're German engineers (you know what that means) and the EU's investing, so they must be onto something.
Are they "investing" or are they "subsidizing".

I'm sure some people still have bad memories of Europe's previous "great" engineering "investment".....the supersonic passenger jet. That ended up being a financial boondoggle. Onto more recent news but not as "sexy"...there's the England / France "Channel Tunnel". Much like an overpriced internet stock from the late 90's this is another investment that has left a bad aftertaste for all the fools that rushed in.

You want investment advice? Buy gold. 8)
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Re: First major shipping company to use SkySails on cargo sh

Unread postby DarkDawg » Mon 01 May 2006, 15:35:26

I agree with Zardoz - thanks for some practical info. The Knude Hansen site that you linked has more feasible concepts, but they are not new. I remember seeing those ideas in Popular Science decades ago.

The kite idea is just too far-fetched. Have you ever tried to fly a kite? Without a constant strong windspeed, the kite nosedives into the ground like a bird without wings. Before anyone invests, I would suggest you seriously look at the limitations of that technology.
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Re: First major shipping company to use SkySails on cargo sh

Unread postby malcomatic_51 » Mon 01 May 2006, 15:37:16

I wouldn't get over-excited. I would be surprised if the system portrayed would work for more than five minutes before getting ripped out in a squall. A large cargo ship requires around 500 tonnes of thrust to drive it at 25 knots. Do you really see a little kite providing 250 tonnes? For weeks on end? On gales force winds? You must be having a giraffe!

I would have thought that Flettner columns would make more sense. These are rotating towers that generate lift by distorting the boundary layer around the tower, similar to the circulation principle of a wing. Flettner also pioneered the early helicopters for the German navy during WW2, very clever guy. The Flettner system is actually robust and was tried in the 1920s, but in the era of cheap energy wasn't really a goer.

You need to realise that winds powerful enough to drive a ship at any speed are rare. You need to go right down into the Southern Ocean to pick up the Roaring Forties, like the Windjammers did. They could average almost 20 knots in these extreme conditions (if they didn't fall to bits). But their overall average on the whole trip to Australia was only about 7 knots, because they spent so much time either in slacker winds or tacking against head winds.

With modern technology you can get better speeds than that of course. I believe that high-tech sailing ships will come back, and they will probably manage 12-15 knot averages on some routes.
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Re: First major shipping company to use SkySails on cargo sh

Unread postby Ibon » Mon 01 May 2006, 16:12:19

As shipping is still much more energy efficient than flight
shipping will grow in the future as a form of peak oil mitigation so fuel efficiency will also really grow in importance. Our mobile society will bring back the passenger ship (not cruises) for moving people. Of course the two week vacation to the other side of an ocean will be dead but passenger ships will serve the following travellers:

- relocations of employees and contract workers
- migrant workers
- retirees and snowbirds
- Europeans or any other peoples fortunate enough to have 2
months holidays


Maybe smaller passenger ships that can use these types of sails will be developed.

You have to assume that if peak oil kills the growth based consumer oriented economic system we may have a lot more time on our hands and ocean crossing on passenger ships might become popular ways to economically move people.

Germans today consume less stuff but reserve more of their savings for long distance travel than Americans for example. Makes sense to me that a German company would have an interest in this technology.
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Re: First major shipping company to use SkySails on cargo sh

Unread postby lorenzo » Mon 01 May 2006, 16:50:07

I see there's some confusion regarding the technology.

1. These kites are not "small", unless you think 5000 square metres is "small".
2. These kites fly at altitudes of hundreds of metres, there were ordinary rigs never get; at these altitudes, winds are far more stable and far stronger than at 50 metres altitude
3. Power from a kite increases with surface area and windspeed by the square: at 1000 metres altitude midlatitude winds, a 5000m² kite delivers tremendous power. The bigger skysails will go up to delivering 6,800 HP nominal power. Quite impressive if you ask me.
4. with the kite, there's minimal to no heel (in contrast to ordinary rigs)
5. Courses up to 50degrees to the wind still work with a skysail, never with an ordinary rig
Image
6. The skysail can make the typical "8" movement, as anyone who has ever used a kite knows, this is were you get constant power from. This is impossible with an ordinary rig.
Etc...

Everything works automated, with a neat computer and with careful calculation and prediction of the best routes.

The technology has already been tested on a 25000ton ship (not "small" either), and it worked quite well, reducing fuel consumption by double digit amounts.

Anyway, you can read all about it at the website: http://www.skysails.info/index.php?id=45&L=1
I see not many people have really looked into it carefully.

But the kite-concept is far more useful and many, many, many times cheaper than ordinary hypermodern rig concepts like this one:

Image

http://www.platinum.matthey.com/media_r ... 88006.html

The above is a zero-emissions solar fuel-cell hydrogen sail ship - but it's just a hobby because it's ridiculously expensive. The skysail costs a fraction of it. It is also real.
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Re: First major shipping company to use SkySails on cargo sh

Unread postby malcomatic_51 » Tue 02 May 2006, 14:44:43

Ah, Lorenzo, has it occurred to you that someone, somewhere might just have a rather elaborate sense of humour? Reading through the Skysail site, I am more convinced than ever that they have the tongue firmly in the cheek. Either that or they are taking something really weird. A kite 300 feet across doing figures of 8? Gimme a break. It's a wind-up, man.

How can you launch a kite 300 feet across from a ship at sea? It's quite hard to launch a little life boat safely out at sea. It can't be done. Such a vast flapping mass could never be safely launched, even on land, let alone from a ship with the usual spartan crew that is the norm nowadays.

Ask yourself this; has anyone, anywhere, ever flown a kite even a tenth the size of that one? No.

I'll put this along with the 60 billion barrel oil field supposedly found off the US coast. Yeah, sure thing. Pass me another cup of tea.
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Re: First major shipping company to use SkySails on cargo sh

Unread postby Zardoz » Tue 02 May 2006, 14:58:52

malcomatic_51 wrote:Reading through the Skysail site, I am more convinced than ever that they have the tongue firmly in the cheek....How can you launch a kite 300 feet across from a ship at sea? It's quite hard to launch a little life boat safely out at sea...


Here in Long Beach we have a stretch of beach that is ideal for kiteboarders, and on a typical summer weekend afternoon you'll see something close to 100 people out there.

But you should see how many of them really struggle to control their kites. Yes, the accomplished experts make it look almost easy, but the difficulty so many of them have with the tiny little rigs they are using tells me all I need to know about the feasibility of a massive wing launched by some poor shmucks on a ship at sea.

And contrary to the graphic Lorenzo posted, kite rigs will NOT go upwind worth a damn. Even the best kiteboarders make very little progress to windward. Virtually all kitesailing is done reaching back-and-forth at a 90-degree angle to the wind.

Ain't gonna happen, folks. File this one under "impractical".
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Re: First major shipping company to use SkySails on cargo sh

Unread postby nemo » Tue 02 May 2006, 17:46:04

What little sailing intuition I have tells me to agree with Zardos on this one. A more classic fore-and-aft rig is probably way more efficient at beating upwind than this kite koncept. Flexible (as in no rigid parts) fabric foils have one great advantage: stowability. Other than that they pretty much suck as wings - their main problem is huge parasitic drag, which increases with the square of the windspeed. Slow flight at a high angle of attack is what these airfoils do best, so they are bad for reaching, where fast, low angle flight is necessary. However, when going down wind this drag adds to your speed, so I'm not ready to entirely dismiss kites as a way to propel watercraft larger than a surfboard. I imagine a racing vessel where a kite replaces the spinnaker. Where the torque of a conventional mast mounted baggy sail pushes the bow into the water, a kite's lift could help bring the hull into planing, giving more speed for the same amount of "horsepower".

I have a hard time imagining the feasablility of a fabric wing of the size required to move a big cargo ship at any useful speed, but maybe I'm just stupid. The stowability of a Big Kite is what makes retrofitting current vessels possible, so parafoils MIGHT just be the ticket for saving some fuel. Time will tell. I'm intrigued, yet sceptical.
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Re: First major shipping company to use SkySails on cargo sh

Unread postby toolpush » Thu 15 Jan 2015, 22:49:08

I am not sure how the previous wind powered ship got on, but here is a new version that takes a slightly different approach. Plus it adds in the use of LNG, instead of oil.

http://hhpinsight.com/marine/2015/01/vi ... d-powered/

Vindskip: LNG- and Wind powered
Sustainable Vessel Proposed by Norway’s Lade AS

Norway’s Lade AS proposes a combination of liquefied natural gas fuel and wind power for a new generation of sustainable cargo ships, and hopes to see the first of the new breed deployed as early as 2019.
That’s the word from Terje Lade, who heads the Ålesund-based firm and is the developer of the “Vindskip” concept.

“Sustainable sea transport is dependent of the development of a new technology that can utilize the renewable resources on the sea,” the company says.

A Rolls-Royce Propulsion System

Lade would combine dedicated-LNG engines from Rolls-Royce with a hull design that would take advantage of both relative and true wind, using airfoil technology to maximize thrust.

another view of Lade's proposed 'Vindskip'
another view of Lade’s proposed ‘Vindskip’
“The wind has been made predictable thanks to modern meteorology,” the company says. “Through a computerized weighting of a steady flow of meteorological information, a computer program can calculate the best route taking advantage of the available wind energy.”

Rolls-Royce Marine has designed an LNG system capable of 23 days of steaming across the Pacific from Japan to Chile, Lade says. The Vindskip as currently envisioned would have two LNG tanks.

Lade, which was established in 2010, holds both Norwegian and international patents related to the Vindskip design.
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Re: First major shipping company to use SkySails on cargo sh

Unread postby Zarquon » Sat 04 Jun 2016, 14:22:09

Ten years later, an update on Skysails.

The idea was never to have the kites replace the main engine, but to supplement them and save some fuel. And it seems that the system worked, basically. But when they had finally solved most of the technical problems, the economy crashed in 2008. Shipping is still in the toilet, freight rates are at rock bottom and nobody invests one million in a system that turned out to save only ~15% fuel in the long run. Only four were ever installed. And I guess the oil price crash was the last nail in the coffin, with bunker fuel at an all-time low. The company was closed down in April.
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Re: First major shipping company to use SkySails on cargo sh

Unread postby SeaGypsy » Sat 04 Jun 2016, 20:54:27

It was a big mistake to go into hyperbole. If they had been honest from the get go, targeting 9 to 12 %, still a significant saving, maybe things would look better now. Anybody who knows anything about sail power knows a kite can never be efficient to windward & the statements made about this are blatant lies.
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